I’m on a podcast tonight called The Bean Cast (I’ll write more about that later) and in prepping for it, I was reminded of two insane occurrences that happened in the ad and retail world this past week that are different but exactly the same in some ways.
I’m speaking of Walmart and Victoria’s Secret and their perception of body images, of course.
Walmart thought categorizing their costumes for the plus-sized women as “fat girl costumes” would be helpful. Or funny? Or go unnoticed? (hello.. what goes unnoticed today?) But what’s crazier than the ass who programmed that is that look at these models. I’m hard pressed to call any of them “fat”. Nor are they girls (except in the loose gender aspect of the word)… these look like normal sized, grown women.
You have to wonder how he (and you know it was a he) got so confused as to why the women in this ad would ever be considered “fat girls”.
OHHHH!!! Wait a second!! I get it!! He must have seen this ad from Victoria’s Secret telling him what the PERFECT BODY was!!!
If these are the perfect bodies, then yes.. anything larger than a size 1 IS a fat girl. And apparently my black sisters don’t fall into EITHER categories because they’re missing from both groups. (although I believe the one girl may be a very fair-skinned black woman.. mixed race maybe?)
When are we going to get past the labeling of women and their bodies? Who is it to decide if I have the perfect body or am a fat chick? Why is that 90% of us DON’T fall into the category of what VS calls the perfect body, yet that’s still what’s crammed down our throats? I’m sorry but my “girls” haven’t seen the inside of a VS bra since they were in their 20’s.. there ain’t no way those little straps are holding these things up and even if they did.. I’m way too cheap to spend good money on something that’s going to be on the floor longer than it’s on my body.
Once again I’m calling BS on VS but man.. .shame on you, too Walmart. Hope your programmer got fired or at least sent to the HR office for some sensitivity training.
